Book Review: Reading Lolita in Tehran, A Memoir in Books: Author, Azar Nafisi

The characters in this book are real innocent people who unfortunately happened to be raised in a country where the word freedom did not seem to exist especially for women.

I often wonder why there is such a strict rule about covering ones head. The women in this story were not in favor of it. Can you believe they were flogged imprisoned even killed because a strand of hair of a girl or woman was visible, and to the authorities this was the worst possible crime a human could commit.

The author was expelled from her job because she refused to wear the veil. While one country punishes their women for not wearing the veil, there are others in the world who detest the veil. It’s all against the women.

My question is why is there so much restriction against women?

Before I lose track of what the book is about, I must rein in my thoughts and stick to the story of this book.

After losing her university job, the author selected seven or eight women students to her house to talk about literature. It was a fun way of learning ,it also gave the students an opportunity to talk about their life and the characters in the novels the author taught. She mentioned Nabokov’s novel Lolita more than others, among the novels they discussed were :Fitzgerald’s , The great Gatsby, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and there were others.

The girls and their teacher had a great time. The best was when they had coffee and pastries, every time they met. I think it was once a week on Thursdays. Pastry brings back fond memories of my childhood , there was a man who visited us once a week with his huge trunk of pastries, Dad would call us to pick our favorite.

This gathering of the teacher with her eight students was a time when I did not have to read the horrors of war, or missile attack from the neighboring country which lasted for eight years.

There are pages in the book where I felt as if I was part of the characters in the book. I remember feeling awful when one of the girls told her teacher that one of their classmate and friend was shot to death.

This was the way of life for them, although it pained me to read what they were going through, I could not stop reading it, I had to know whether the teacher and the students were all right in the end.

Azar Nafisi the author mentioned the novel, ‘Lolita, ‘ very frequently. I was curious to know what it was about. I went to the local bookstore and bought Lolita to satisfy my curiosity. You guessed it I’m planning to start reading it today, God willing. 🙂

Thank you Philippa, I finished reading it yesterday.
It was difficult to absorb all the horrendous situations,
I managed to make myself stick to it, I wanted to know if most of the main characters
and the author were all right in the end. 🙂